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Mount Abiegnos and the Masks a Study of Occult

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Mount Abiegnos and the Masks a Study of Occult MOUNT ABIEGNOS AND THE MASKS Sol Biderman A STUDY OF OCCULT IMAGERY IN WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS AND FERNANDO PESSOA In the last half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, a revival of interest in arcane scien• ces took place in Europe, perhaps as a reaction against the reigning Darwinist and Positivist beliefs and middle-class Christianity. In France, The Abbe Constant wrote a series of books on the occult arts under the name of Eliphas Levi- He aroused much interest in the Kabala, a collection of Hebrew writings which mystics consider their sacred Bibles. The doc• trines of the Fremasons, the Rosicrucians, and the Sweden- borgians enjoyed a considerable following. In 1887, Madam H.P. Blavatsky( the Russian traveler and mystic, founded her Theosophist Society in London, based on Eastern wisdom she culled on her arduous journeys through Asia. The following year, the Hermetic Students of the Golden Dawn stablished their lodge in London. In the early twentieth century French Surrealists, in the words of Jacques Maritain, attempted to overthrow beauty as the corollary of verse and enthrone magic knowledge as the highest aim of poetry (1). A similar wave of occultist activity swept Europe during and after the Renaissance, when Pico della Mirandola, Henry More, Paracelsus, J. V. Andrea and others delved in the her• metic doctrines of early Christian cults, Hebrew kabalistic literature, and Egyptian and Chaldean numerology, angelo- logy and astrology. (1) Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, Meridian Books 1961, Cleveland and N. Y. p. 143. — 38 — In this melange of occultism, two tendences could be no• ted : the mystical and the magical. The mystic sought arcane knowledge that he might free himself from his self and be united with the unifying force of the world. The magician em- ployd symbols, charms, incantations and numerological cal• culations that he might ascend the stairs of occult knowledge and gain control over the natural forces of the world, like Doctor Faustus. The mystic attempted to break the bonds of his constricting, orthodox faith and experience an epiphany, a direct communion with the Godhead. The magician, how• ever limited himself to uttering the traditional incantations rigorously imposed by his cult. From this fountain of opaque water, two of Europe's leading poets came to drink: Ireland's William Buttler Yeats (1865-1939) and Portugal's Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). In Pessoa's veins ran the mystic blood of the crypto-Jews of Portugal, the Marranos. His remote ancestor Sancho Pes• soa da Cunha, had been condemned by the Inquisition for "judaizing" in Coimbra in 1706. (2) It will be remembered that the Jews of Portugal directly influenced the mystic trend of that nation. In the 1490s the Jews flooded into Portugal, fleeing the Inquisition in Spain- The Inquisition was soon es• tablished in Portugal, and the Jews who could not flee were forced to become New Christians, or Marranos. Menaced by death at the stake and other tortures of the Holy Office, these Jews waited ardently for the Messiah to save them from their suffering. Suffering was a prerequisite for the coming of the Messiah, and one Jewish scholar described the Inquisition as the "birth pangs of the Messiah". This messianic fervor, via Solomon Molcho and David Reubeni, spread to the Portuguese, especially the shoemaker of Trancoso, Bandarra, and develo• ped in the cult of Sebastianism. Dom Sebastian was a mega- lomaniacal, virgin king of Portugal who died in a crusade against the Moors at Alcacer Kebir in 1578. Pessoa brilliantly evoked this messianic longing in Mensagem and, in the last year of his life, declared his nation was in need of a "new Se• bastianism". (3) (2) João Gaspar Simões, Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa, Livraria Bertrand, Lisboa, Vol. 1, p. 22. (3) Ibid. Vcl. 2, p. 361. — 39 — Pessoa's nearer kin also had a mystic bent. His aunt, Ana Luisa Nogueira de Freitas, a spiritist, initiated him in the occult arts. He attended seances in her home in 1915 and 1916 and composed horoscopes. By tracing horoscopes, he believed he had foreseen the apoplectic stroke which attacked his mo• ther, in Pretoria, South Africa, at the end of 1915. The stroke and the suicide of his best friend, Mario de Sa-Carneiro, early in 1916, plunged him into a severe depression. In this desolate emotional state he succeeded in "communicating" with the Beyond. (4) Pessoa translated into Portuguese C.W. Leadbeater's Com• pendium of Theosophy, and Annie Besant's Ideas of Theosophy and Theosophic Conferences, the Latter book under the pseu donym Fernando de Castro. (5) Annie Besant was one of the leaders of Madame Blavatsky's Theosophist movement to which Yeats belong for a time in 1890. The Portuguese poet also took up automatic writing, or, to be more specific, automatic writing took up him. One night, after returning home from his favorite haunt, the Cafe Brasi• leira, he felt a sudden compulsion to sit down at the table and write. He wrote "Cousas sem relevo, nem interesse, nem im• portância", through the interventions of a medium who signed his name "Manuel Gualdino da Cunha", so the poet writes to his occultist aunt. "Manuel Gualdino da Cunha" was one of his uncles. (6) Pessoa also was actively interested in the Ro- sicrucians and the Knights Templars of Portugal, although the latter had been dormant for centuries. In a letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Pessoa expounded his attitude toward the arcane sciences: Creio na existência de mundos superiores ao nosso e de ha• bitantes desses mundos, em experiências de diversos graus de espiritualidade, subtilizando se até se chegar a um Ente Supremo, que presumive'mente criou este mundo. Pode ser que haja outros Entes, igualmente Supremos, que hajam criado outros universos, e que esses universos coexistam com o nosso, interpenetradamente ou não... Há três caminhos para o oculto: o caminho mágico (incluindo práticas como as (4) Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 225. (5) Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 226. (6) Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 225. — 40 — do espiritismo, intelectualmente ao nível da bruxaria, que é magia também), caminho esse extremamente perigoso, em todos os sentidos; o caminho místico, que não tem propria• mente perigos, mas é incerto e lento; e o que se chama o caminho alquímico, o mais difícil e o mais perfeito de todos, porque envolve uma transmutação da própria personalidade que a prepara, sem grandes riscos, antes com defesas que os outros caminhos não têm. In March, 1890, Yeats joined the Hermetic Student of the Golden Dawn, an experience which, to use his own words, "shaped and isolated" him. (8) He had also been a member ot Madame Blavatsky's Theosophist lodge for a time- The Gol• den Dawn stressed the importance of occult magic, whereas the Theosophists tended toward Eastern mysticism. Yeats also interested himself in the Rosicrucians and, like Pessoa, wrote a poem on Christian Rosenkreuz in his grave, called "The Mountain Tomb". The Irish poet also experimented in automatic writting. Yeats wife, George, began an automatic writing experiment during their honeymoon in 1917 to distract him from some worries. The sentences she wrote aroused his interest, and he took it up as well. Though both had been acquainted with automatic writing previously, the results had not been so amazing. After a few days, the writings Yeats had collected were of such value, he dedicated several years to classify and explain them. (9) The result was A Vision, a book first pu• blished in 1925, which splains Yeats doctrine of the soul, as well as his concept of the cyclical nature of history, symbo• lized by the twenty eight phases of the moon. Yeats employed images and spells to put himself into a trance. In this state of exaltation, according to his own account, he would receive visions whose source was beyond his individual mind. They might have been wishful thinking and apprehensions, but he chose to believe they were ema• nations from the Universal Memory and the incorporeal in- (7) Ibid. Vol. 2, p. 233. (8) Richard Ellmann, Yats: The Man and the Masks, Faber, London, 1949 p. 89. (9) A. G. Stock, W. B. Yeats: His Poetry and Thought, Cambridge University Press, 1961, p. 122. — 41 — telligences that floated through the world. (10) In an essay on "Magic", Yeats wrote: I believe in the practice and philosophy of what we have agreed to call magic, in what I must call the evocation of spirits, though I do not know what they are, in the power of creating magical illusions, in the visions of truth in the depth of the mind when the eyes are closed; and I believe in three doctrines, which have, as I think, been handed down from early times, and been the foundation of nearly all magical practices. These doctrines are: (1) That the borders of our minds are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, a single energy. (2) That the borders of our memories are shifting, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the me• mory of Nature herself. (3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols. Owing to their common interests, Yeats and Pessoa em• ployed common hermetic images in their art: Mount Abiegnos, the Rose and the Cross, the Initiation into the Hidden Truths, the illusory nature of death, and the Mask. Of the images, perhaps the most exotic and the least fa• miliar is Mount Abiegnos. Abiegnos was an ancient nomad village of Scythia on the banks of the Yaxartes River.
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